


iterate

by krebkrebkreb



Series: recursive [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/M, Gallifrey, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, Jack Needs a Hug, Memory Loss, POV Jack Harkness, Post-Episode: Revolution of the Daleks, Sharing a Bed, Telepathy, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness, The Doctor (Doctor Who) Needs a Hug, The Matrix (Doctor Who) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 20:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30044049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krebkrebkreb/pseuds/krebkrebkreb
Summary: Some threads don’t want to be pulled at. Some threads won't let you pull at them.(“Is this familiar?” she asks. “No,” he responds. “Me neither,” she says. These are the wrong answers.)(A companion piece/sequel-of-sorts to "again, again, again, again", wherein the Doctor and Jack are brave enough to go looking for secrets with no one left to keep them and find something like mutual understanding instead.)
Relationships: Jack Harkness/River Song (mentioned), The Doctor/River Song (mentioned), Thirteenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Series: recursive [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2209011
Comments: 13
Kudos: 11





	iterate

After a short, bittersweet post-Dalek dinner with Gwen Cooper and her family, Jack Harkness finds himself back on the TARDIS. He doesn’t know where the Doctor will drop him off, didn’t really expect her to pick him up again in the first place, but he’s happy to be on this time and space ship with her for just a little longer.

Yaz is apparently already in bed, so the console room is empty save for the two of them.

“So…” he starts, hands in his pockets. He isn’t sure where he would end that sentence. Separation, probably? Going different ways for another millennia or more? The Doctor leaving him off somewhere after disabling his vortex manipulator? Not exactly something he’s eager to get moving on to.

“Where do you want to go?” the Doctor asks, a smile on her face.

Jack chuckles. “Want?” he asks, daring to lean casually against the TARDIS console. “Figured it would be wherever you want to take me.”

She keeps on smiling. “Want to take a trip? You, me, Yaz?”

“A trip?” He almost laughs. Is he hearing this right? A trip, as in travel with her? “I’ll go with you anywhere, Doctor.” Anywhere, any when. 

“Alright then.” She looks so pleased. Did she really think he might say no? “Your room should be where you left it. Or it’s somewhere else; I’m never really sure about where the TARDIS puts rooms that haven’t been used in a while. My swimming pool wound up in the library once, did I ever tell you?”

He does laugh at that because he knows she expects him too, but inside he is reeling. His old suite of rooms not having been emptied into the vortex or reconsolidated into the TARDIS or whatever happens when someone is no longer welcome aboard anymore is...

Jack remembers what’s in there. He hasn’t forgotten all the souvenirs and trinkets from all those different planets. He hasn’t forgotten all the photographs of the three of them, of his first Doctor and of Rose and of himself. It’s all pieces of his life, pieces of the _best parts_ of his life: that time he spent with the Doctor learning to be a better man. Learning to let go of the selfishness that he had carried with him for those short few first decades.

He keeps having to say goodbye to Rose, nearly every time he says hello to the Doctor, but getting to see those photographs again is almost a bit like getting to say hello. Hello to Rose who loved him and who had doomed him and who, he hopes, has remained ignorant of everything she accidentally doomed him to.

She _did_ remain ignorant… didn’t she?

“Did she ever know?” Jack finds himself asking, the words tumbling out before he can think better of it.

The Doctor doesn’t face him, turning cranks and pressing buttons in what he’s pretty sure is the dematerialization sequence. “Who know what? Green lever, please.”

He pulls the lever without thinking, barely taking his off of her for more than the instant it takes him to locate it.

“Did Rose ever…” And he trails off because he can’t admit to thinking about it having been _Rose_ that made him this way if he ever wants an answer, but he has to know. He suddenly very much needs to know this. “Did you tell her, Doctor?”

Maybe they aren’t talking about exactly the same thing, maybe the Doctor doesn’t know exactly _what_ he’s asking about, but he is so very relieved when she sighs and shakes her head and tells him no, tells him that Rose didn’t know a lot of things she perhaps should have.

“I wish I had,” she continues, and now Jack _knows_ they aren’t talking about the same thing. Even after faces and millennia, he can’t fathom a version of the Doctor who would want to burden Rose with that knowledge. “I wish I had said so much, Jack. To more than Rose.”

He can’t help but sigh. That old feeling of regret, of things gone painfully unsaid, is only more profound after having just seen Gwen and her family and he admits: “I think I get what you mean now.”

“I should never have left you,” the Doctor says, and the words hit him like a solid thing. “Not the first time, not any of the others.”

It’s what he spent a long time wanting to hear. He’s kept himself comforted on battlefields and in the cold dark of space by imagining words just like these. I regret leaving you on that space station surrounded by ash and death, Jack. I should have come back for you, Jack. Can you forgive me, Jack.

Those fantasies have all played themselves out so many times inside his mind, but in none of them did the Doctor look so tired or sound so fucking _sad_ about it.

__

“Doctor, it’s been _literal_ millennia,” he says, an offer to drop the subject.

__

She surprises him—what _hasn’t_ surprised him since he stepped back onto the TARDIS—by barreling right on and continuing to talk.

__

“Or it’s been billions of years, but that doesn’t make it less true. You’re impossible and beautiful and I’ve been such a fool and a coward for so long. I’m old, Jack. I’m so old now.”

__

He blows out a breath and stuffs his hands in his pockets. Trust the Doctor to respond with hyperbole after he specifies literality. “Lookin’ good for several billion.”

__

She smiles at the vague and slightly awkward flirtation and his heart soars a little at the sight, but what she says next makes it sink again. _Four billion years in a time loop?_ And then—“It’s easier to think about time I can sort of remember than time I can’t.”

__

His own lost memories—two years taken from him by what he thinks was the Time Agency though he will never really know the truth—suddenly feel like _nothing_ in comparison to what she is telling him. _Millions_ of years gone? The entire length of the history of the Time Lords?

__

“How did you…” he starts, trailing off because he has _no idea_ what words to finish with. How did it happen? How did she find out? How and _why_ did she decide to tell him about it? The Doctor has never mentioned missing any memories before.

__

“The Master,” she says, and his blood runs cold.

__

He so clearly remembers when he saw the Master die. It’s somehow more vivid than the rest of that horrible year, the way the Doctor had embraced him and forgiven him and wept over him. Jack understands now why the Doctor had tried to save his old friend, he understands that horrible feeling of being the last one alive who knows the truth and the details of your past, but back when he was scarcely a couple hundred years old? It had cut him deep.

__

He doesn’t know how the other Time Lord cheated death and quite frankly he doesn’t _want_ to know. It doesn’t matter to him if the Master told her or showed her or even if he took her memories himself and is just now confessing. He just hopes none of it is true.

__

“And you believe him?” Jack asks, trying to keep his tone careful and even but—but please, let it be a madman’s horrible lie.

__

She sighs. “I believe myself. Had a run-in with a me I didn’t know, and that me didn’t know this me.”

__

That’s... understandably compelling evidence. He knows what crossing your own time stream entails, has done it a few times himself, and the older one always remembers when it’s done. To not remember yourself at all, to not even remember your own _face_ as the Doctor is saying… That goes beyond the way time messes with the brain to prevent paradoxes and implies something much bigger.

__

“Jack,” the Doctor continues, sounding surprised and maybe as though she has just realized something awful, ”have you ever heard of the Division?”

__

That? That’s implying a lot more of something _else_. There are and have been and will be lots of organizations and groups called the Division, but there is only one that she could possibly be talking about in this context. Gallifreyans who—reportedly, though it is beyond impossible to verify—went in and fixed events in history to their liking.

__

“The Division?” he asks, just to make sure he hasn’t somehow misheard, despite how unlikely that would be. She nods. Shit. ”Fewer rumors in the Time Agency than we had about even the Time Lords, but there were still rumors. Why?”

__

Please don’t say what he knows she’s likely to, please don’t say—“I think I worked for them. I think I worked for them possibly against my will and for so long that they gave me a reward: retirement. A second life with no trace at all of the first left in my head.”

__

“ _Fuck_.” He deeply appreciates that the TARDIS seems to agree with him, letting the word come out of his mouth with no translation filter softening it.

__

“Still want to travel with me?” she asks, completely inexplicably. “Knowing I’m not who you thought I am?”

__

He risks stepping closer to her, moving slowly and leaving her enough space to back away if what he’s about to say is too much. Even if it is too much, he’s pretty sure she needs to hear it.

__

“Doctor,” he says, so careful to use her chosen title because that’s who she _is_ , “do you remember what I said earlier about loving you?”

____

The Doctor just shrugs a little, looking almost embarrassed by the reminder. Earlier today, just after he broke them both out of prison, he would have hesitated at that embarrassment. He would have tried to find some other way to say what he wants. Now? Now she needs to know.

____

“This, what you’ve said, what you’ve learned? It still doesn’t change anything.”

____

The sound she makes is heartbreaking, something not quite either a sob or a sad, disbelieving laugh. “I really don’t deserve that kind of faith, Jack.”

____

And he’s been there. Maybe not to nearly the same degree, but he knows what it’s like to find out that you may have done things you would hate yourself for. What it’s like to wake up with the realization that you have no idea what type of person you’ve actually been.

____

“Too bad,” he says firmly, and he throws caution to the wind and kisses her.

____

It’s gentle, soft, careful, and it is nearly chaste but it goes on longer than he could hope for. He doesn’t let himself think too hard about the consequences of what he’s doing, how earlier he had voiced a desire to do exactly this and she had backed away. He focuses just on what she needs: Jack Harkness, treating the Doctor the way he always has.

____

A thought passes between them, feelings he knows aren’t his own. Jack is so focused on how this could be the end of things between them—this too-hasty, too-showy gesture—but this feeling carries with it a careful hope like the dawning of spring. It confuses him for a moment before he remembers: Time Lords are very strong telepaths.

____

He pulls away and looks at her face, so astonishingly beautiful. His thumb brushes across her cheekbone just because he can.

____

“Do you _want_ this to be a beginning?” he asks, full of wonder at the idea. Trying not to hope.

____

When she smiles it’s that sad one he knows means she doesn’t think she deserves whatever she’s being offered. “Bit old for beginnings, me.”

____

“No such thing,” he says, and he means it.

____

“Oh, you scare me a little, Jack.”

____

It’s like having cold water poured over him. He releases her, letting his hands drop from her face and stepping back. “Scare you?” he asks, because he would like to know exactly how far he has overstepped. When he’s thinking about this moment ten or fifty or a hundred years from now, he would really like to have that context.

____

But then what she says surprises him. “Human lives are so short. I’m already mourning everyone, as soon as I meet them, ‘cause you’ll all just be gone in a blink for me. Everyone ‘cept you. You’re fixed permanent. I’ll never have to say goodbye to you. Being in the human’s shoes but knowing exactly how you’ll feel once I’m gone is… I don’t like it.”

____

And that… that really isn’t what he expected at all. The Doctor is scared of hurting _him_ when her time runs out? She has to know the kind of pain he feels after every parting he has had with her. Pushing him away now is no different than pushing him away in a century or in a millennia or in an eon. It’s always going to hurt the same, because for so long she has been what he orbits around. The face she wears doesn’t matter; it’s the core of who the Doctor is that he has loved for nearly his entire life.

____

“How about being in the Doctor’s shoes, then?” he suggests. “The Doctor, who’s not gonna let worrying about how I’ll feel in two or ten or fifty thousand years get in the way of something that could make us both so much happier in the meantime?”

____

He feels a terrible mix of hopeful and desperate, asking this. He really will give her fifty thousand years if she wants them. He will give her eternity, because he is already giving her eternity, just at a horrible distance. She really _doesn’t_ ever have to lose him, not if she doesn’t want to.

____

The Doctor taught him to stop being a selfish person in 20th century London and he has carried that lesson with him through his first death and all the others.

____

He doesn’t know what his face looks like when she steps towards him again but he suddenly doesn’t care about appearances anymore because she is kissing him again.

____

It goes on and on and he tastes time on her tongue. When they part, they are both smiling.

____

“Let’s take a trip. You, me, Yaz.”

____

It’s nearly the same thing she had said when he came aboard TARDIS just a bit ago, but this feels different than an offer for just one trip. He doesn’t want to hope too much but it feels like a beginning.

____

“A trip,” he agrees. Then, because he just can’t resist, he brushes his lips gently across her smiling cheek. 

____

“You old softie,” she says. It’s a fond accusation and he can’t deny it. 

____

  
  


____

Kissing the Doctor isn’t really anything like kissing a human. Sure, Jack has kissed some people that were _far_ more alien in both appearance and approach, but there’s something just strange about her very human appearance coupled with those cool lips and the faint frizzling feeling of what he can only describe as time itself.

____

It is strange, but it is also wonderful.

____

Theirs isn’t going to be some grand romance. Jack knows the Doctor, and he knows how she works. Hell, he himself was married to the Doctor’s late wife for a good two dozen years and they had both arrived separately to the same conclusion about this shared object of their affections: The Doctor doesn’t really do long-term or continuous commitment, and she _definitely_ doesn’t do that sort of commitment with humans. Not people as almost fully human as they are, at any rate.

____

Even so, he isn’t going to wait around all anxious for the other shoe to drop. It may have taken a very literal thousand years for the lesson to sink in but he’s finally learned to just enjoy a good thing while it lasts.

____

And this? This is very good.

____

He and the Doctor are settled together on a frankly garish purple sofa. She is sitting sideways in his lap, hands in his hair, and they have been languidly making out for the better part of an hour.

____

“Let’s get me used to having you around,” she had said before pressing her lips to his and almost immediately opening her mouth to deepen the kiss and, well. Jack certainly is not complaining.

____

He won’t dare push things further, however. Not when this is more than he could have dreamed of having. His hands remain safely in zones of almost casual touch—arms, shoulders, back, waist—and all carefully over the top of her two t-shirt layers. If she wants something more, she will tell him.

____

He doesn’t really think she _will_ want anything more and that’s okay. Being allowed this much closeness, this much intimacy with someone he loves so much? It’s a gift. A gift he never expected, not after being told how wrong his immortal existence is and how difficult it is for the Doctor to have him near.

____

Though it doesn’t really seem like she’s having a difficult time right now, the way she’s pressing herself to his front and nipping at his lower lip and fuck if she keeps making those sweet little noises he’s going to have a problem. 

____

Not a bad problem—for him. It is in fact the nicest problem he can imagine having when it comes to the Doctor. But pretty soon she is going to notice what’s going on in his pants and…

____

The Doctor pulls away from the kiss with a little laugh. “You’re thinking _really_ loudly.”

____

He chuckles, the sound unsatisfyingly breathy and not nearly as together as he would have liked it to be. “My apologies.”

____

“S’flattering,” she says, smiling wide and happy. “ _The_ Captain Jack Harkness, all worked up by me.”

____

His laugh this time is low and throaty, far more confident. “Always.”

____

The Doctor lays her hand against his cheek and the thought of an image—a memory?—that isn’t his own enters Jack’s mind. It’s himself, from another, taller person’s point of view. He is wearing his greatcoat from the war but still young, and he is grinning devilishly. The periphery of it is blurred and vague but Jack himself is in full, sharp color, haloed by bright sunlight. He looks happy, very happy, and so impossibly young. With the image comes a wave of a feeling that is somewhere between fondness and approval.

____

“Always,” the Doctor repeats back to him.

____

“Where—?”

____

“Remember when I took you and Rose to that garden party on Granlo Z?”

____

He has to search hard through his memories—the human mind isn’t meant to hold millennia and it’s getting pretty crowded up there—but what he recalls of the day brings an echo of that long-ago grin to his face. “With the cocktails that tasted like cotton candy?”

____

The Doctor nods, also smiling. Her smile is a sweeter, softer, sadder thing. It’s a look she often wears when Rose comes up. “You stopped Rose from having far too many without making her feel silly about accidentally overindulging and I remember thinking, there’s a good egg. I’m glad he’s with us.”

____

“A devilishly handsome good egg?” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. 

____

The comment has the desired effect. She laughs and kisses him softly. “A devilishly handsome good egg.”

____

So, he thinks as he finds her lips with his again, maybe theirs isn’t a romance that will be grand and all-consuming but it really is one for the ages.   
  


____

____

This Doctor’s moods appear to be significantly less wild and mercurial than any of the other faces he’s known her by.

____

Big ears was often angry and bitter and harsh, but when he was gentle he could be _so_ gentle. Pinstripes had the same anger, but he also had an incredible tenderness that seemed to be exclusively directed towards Rose.

____

During their brief and whirlwind marriage—or what feels now to be brief and whirlwind, because what is just 20 or so years compared to the life he has lived?—River Song had told him some about the two that must have been between the pinstripes and his current Doctor. Bowtie, with his floppy hair and giddy laughter. Grey hair and eyebrows, both grumpy and tender. She told him about others too, ones too young to know either of them, that all came before the Time War sunk its claws in.

____

The Doctor will probably never admit it, but she is carrying around as much trauma these days as Jack himself is. Maybe more, if only because he is certain that, despite their timelines both being all over the place, she has at _least_ a thousand years of age on him still. 

____

Maybe—probably—this is horrible of him to think, but that hurt they share makes him feel closer to her. Who else do they each know who carries _so much_ in their heart? Or hearts, as the case may be.

____

Yaz is the only one of this Doctor’s friends he has really gotten to know, now that the three of them have been traveling together for a little while. She’s an interesting young woman.

____

Her similarities to Gwen Cooper—in both occupation and attitude—endear him to her immediately, but there’s a naïveté in her too that he would not expect from a police officer but _would_ from one of the Doctor’s traveling companions. Not that it’s of any use to compare her to any of the others.

____

Her devotion to the Doctor might remind him of Rose, if not for the obvious hurt she still carries about those ten months she was left on Earth. Maybe that hurt and the subsequent caution would remind him of Martha, but Martha had chosen to leave after realizing she wasn’t ever going to be someone the Doctor thought of as an equal and Yaz is still here.

____

It’s himself he sees the most in her. The way she seems to spring back no matter what the universe hurls at her, how protective she is of the Doctor, how she was _left_ by the Doctor and how desperate she was to find her again.

____

“Enjoy the journey while you’re on it,” he remembers telling Yaz in Osaka, “because the joy is worth the pain.”

____

Already he has forgotten exactly how she responded, how her lips may have pursed in thought or her brows come together. Did he succeed in reassuring her like he had intended to? He doesn’t know.

____

Loving the Doctor how they do is difficult and always a little bit one-sided. A hurricane cannot appreciate the debris caught in it, and despite his age he still very much feels more like a leaf caught up in the Doctor’s wind than a gale himself.

____

Yaz looks at him sometimes, when he’s holding the Doctor’s hand or she has draped herself lazily across his lap, and he can tell she’s jealous.

____

Don’t be, he wants to say to her every time he sees her get that hard-sad-disappointed expression on her face. I don’t mean anything more to her than you do. She and I may have had this new and wonderful second-chance beginning but she will still choose to leave me again someday too.

____

That’s the problem with the Doctor traveling with people barely out of childhood, he thinks. Not enough life lived to really have perspective on it all m. He was in Yaz’s shoes when the Doctor had seemed to only have eyes for Rose; Clara was there with River… The only constant in the Doctor’s love life is the Doctor herself.

____

Jack may be what the Doctor has decided she needs right now but it won’t stay that way forever. Even with the offer of the rest of his life on the table, she will only take a fraction of that.

____

Today they’re in the 39th century, on a jungle planet he’s never been to before. They are standing together and watching as Yaz marvels at some of the very friendly wildlife when the Doctor asks him: “Did you ever get those memories back?”

____

He doesn’t even need to ask what exactly she’s talking about. He just shakes his head. “Whatever they used to remove them, it was thorough. Left no scarring, just”—he mimes pulling something like a string from his left temple and flicking it away—“Pfft. Gone. I’m not even sure any more that the Time Agency was responsible. They don’t have the kind of technology that can take years away but leave no trace.”

____

The Doctor’s face is carefully blank, in that way he knows means she has thoughts she isn’t sharing.

____

“What is it?” he wants to know.

____

“I’d like to try and take a look.”

____

Jack has never _really_ had the Doctor poke around in his mind before, not on purpose. When he was very young—when he traveled with big ears and Rose and was not as far removed from having two years stolen from him—it would have been generously understating things to say the idea of someone rooting around through his most personal thoughts and memories had made him uncomfortable. Later, pinstripes had barely allowed himself to be within half a dozen feet of Jack. Even the little things passed back and forth between them now during quiet, intimate moments of shared closeness… they’re all skimmed practically right off the surface.

____

“I’m not sure you’ll like what you find,” he says, not talking only about the two missing years.

____

“I’m not sure either,” she responds. He can’t tell exactly what she means but her entire demeanor is dark and sad in the way he usually only sees when she’s thinking about her own past.

____

He can’t resist asking, while Yaz is still out of earshot and the topic hasn’t yet faded into something the Doctor won’t want to revisit: “What _do_ you think you might find?”

____

She remains silent for long enough that Jack is worried he’s pushed it too far. He’s just about to change the topic when she speaks again.

____

“Do you remember what I said about the Division and my own missing time?”

____

Does he remember? How could he _forget_. Not only was it barely more than a week ago, but earning that the Doctor had been violated the same way he had but _worse_ , lifetimes worth of memories taken from her instead of just two years...

____

“Why?” he asks carefully.

____

Yaz’s laugh carries over to them, along with the mimicking call of something he thinks might be a relative of Earth parrots. Neither of them are paying much attention to her right now beyond making sure she’s not getting into danger.

____

“I think it might, _might_ be related.”

____

He really wishes that surprised him. Of all the civilizations in all the universe who could so cleanly excise years from his past, Time Lords have long been on his short list of suspects. He’s never had—or expected—one to agree with him about it before.

____

“Tonight?” he offers. No sense in putting it off.

____

She looks grim in the way that only the Doctor can manage to look from while smiling brightly. “Sure. Tonight.”  
  


____

____

‘Tonight’ comes sooner than he would like, though that would likely be the case even if tonight came in a thousand years. The day goes as smoothly as anything with the Doctor does, which is to say that he and Yaz spend several hours being chased by very angry orange monkeys with two side-by-side faces and the Doctor’s sonic manages to find its way into the center of a truly impressively wide puddle of mud.

____

Jack sweeps the Doctor off her feet into an embrace once the three of them are safe, and then he kisses her on the mouth just because he _can_. Like a starving man finally given food, Jack has become a bit of a glutton for the Doctor’s affection. Unlike a starving man making himself sick from overeating, he knows he could never have enough of this to make it bad.

____

They’re both grinning when they separate and Jack wastes no time in swinging Yaz into his arms next. As he is very fond of all his parts remaining attached and un-kicked, he does not follow _this_ hug with a kiss.

____

“Get off!” Yaz complains anyway, laughing. “You’re getting stinking mud all over me and I _like_ this jacket.”

____

The Doctor gestures down at her own mud-splattered clothes. Maybe even more mud _caked_ than splattered. “Care if I get a change while you get us out of here? Don’t want it in the controls.”

____

Yaz looks between Jack and the Doctor with an incredulous expression, like she doesn’t know to whom exactly the Doctor is referring. Honestly, Jack feels pretty incredulous himself right now. The Doctor is going to let him do this? The Doctor is going to let _him_ do this?

____

“ _He_ can fly this thing?” Yaz asks. 

____

The Doctor nods, looking fairly cheery. Remarkably more cheery than Jack feels. “I had it on very good authority from my wife that he at least knows the academic theory. Enough to get us into the vortex and away from any more of those monkeys.” She pauses, looking thoughtful. Obviously not noticing the frankly hilarious expression of confusion and disbelief on Yaz’s face. “He helped me with it once too, but there were more than enough pilots that time around. So many we had extras! Had to have Rose’s mum take a step back. Fairly certain all that has happened for you yet?”

____

Jack can only nod. It happened more than a thousand years ago, but it is one of the few memories from that time which he can recall almost like it was yesterday simply because he thinks on it so often—though there is no telling how much those frequent recollections have warped it from reality. All of them gathered around the TARDIS console, the Doctor in pinstripes and his near-human double guiding them through leading the Earth back home. _He_ had felt at home.

____

It doesn’t take long for the beginning of what she said to catch up to him, barreling through the memories of the rest of it.

____

“Doctor, you’re _married_?” Yaz asks, at the same time Jack is saying, stunned: “You know I knew River?”

____

There are a tense few seconds of quiet after they speak over one another, like each is waiting for the other to go first and restart this conversation. The Doctor, for her part, just looks _amused._ It is a very good look on her, even when it’s at his expense.

____

Finally, Jack says: “Doesn’t the TARDIS hate me?”

____

The console makes a low whirring noise, and there is the vaguest feeling of disappointment not his own.

____

The Doctor turns to leave. “If she hated you, she wouldn’t let you keep the cocktail lounge.”

____

Jack and Yaz are left alone in a fairly awkward silence.

____

He remembers River fondly, but it’s dulled by the passage of time and their shared sorrow. He was maybe seven hundred years old when they met, older than River’s almost two hundred. She hadn't seen the Doctor in about the span of a natural human lifetime and Jack? Jack hadn’t seen the Doctor since he was dropped off in London with Mickey and Martha in the year 2008. They spent as much time missing him as they did admiring each other.

____

Yaz turns to him, arms folded across her chest. In the quiet left behind in the Doctor’s wake, Jack can hear her leather jacket squeaking as she moves. The sound is earthy, grounding. “The doctor really has a wife?”

____

“A few,” he admits, “as far as I know. Queen Liz the First is among them, though I hear tell the Doctor only did that because he needed to find out which was the real queen and which was a zygon.”

____

Yaz chuckles, like she doesn’t believe him. He probably wouldn’t believe himself either, if he were talking about anyone other than the Doctor.

____

“That raises so many more questions,” she says. “Skipping over whatever a zygon is, you said _he_ just now. You called the Doctor a he, but she’s a woman. Queen Elizabeth the First was also definitely a woman, and she was definitely _never_ married.”

____

He scoffs. “All the things you’ve seen and learned on board the TARDIS, and you’re choosing _this_ to doubt?”

____

“It’s history! I can’t very well just not believe history, can I?”

____

“Ohoho, you have a _lot_ to learn.”

____

When he starts flipping switches and pressing buttons he _thinks_ are correct—these desktop redesigns really need to come with a manual, or at least labels if the Doctor is going to be asking others to play at being pilot—the TARDIS helpfully guides him with quiet noises and the gentlest of psychic nudges when he’s about to do something wrong. He strokes the console gently in thanks, delighted when he receives back a quiet feeling of fondness and good humor.

____

Yaz clears her throat pointedly. “Going to ignore my questions then, just like the Doctor?”

____

“The Doctor is not going to be happy if I haven’t done _something_ by the time she gets back.” A rising sound from the TARDIS accompanies that statement.

____

“Why didn’t the Doctor tell us she was married?”

____

Boy young people are so pushy and impatient! Was he ever like this?

____

“Do you remember how she _just_ said that all I have is academic knowledge? I really need to concentrate as I try and turn that into practical experience.” He points across the console. “Pull that green lever for me?”

____

Yaz does as she’s asked. She’s still frowning, but at least she doesn’t complain.

____

The TARDIS shudders and makes that wonderful, familiar groaning noise as it dematerializes into the vortex.

____

Task done, Jack turns to fully face Yaz. “The Doctor doesn’t tend to like to talk about her past, especially not the painful parts.”

____

She seems to take a moment to digest this. “Her wife is a painful thing?”

____

He works his jaw from side to side, thinking. “River died a long time ago, and that’s not my story to tell.”

____

“Why did she mention her at all, then?”

____

He scrubs a hand over his face, _really_ not wanting to answer that question.

____

“Jack?” Yaz pushes.

____

“She was my wife for a while too, and I guess the Doctor probably knows that. Time travel is… eventually, if you live long enough, you meet a lot of your fellow time travelers. And a lot of those other time travelers, they often know the Doctor. At least a little.” Or a lot. 

____

“You can’t be older than fifty!”

____

He places a hand on his chest and gasps theatrically. “I look _fifty_? I thought it was forty-five, maybe forty-six on a bad day.” Once Yaz laughs like he had wanted her to, he forges on. “But, no. Immortal, remember? I’m… I think at least two thousand, if we’re going by Earth years? It's hard to keep track after a point.”

____

“Two thousand years old and still craving validation like a little kid,” she says. Jack pretends—or pretends to himself that he’s pretending—to look affronted.

____

“So you two were both married to her? At the same time?” Yaz looks like she’s trying to digest this and she finds it uncomfortable. What he wouldn’t give to go back to fifty-first century social politics, at least for a little while.

____

“I doubt I was even River’s second husband. That woman left a trail of broken hearts across the cosmos that could rival the Doctor’s.”

____

The TARDIS makes a sad, consoling sound. His mind is granted the guest of a feeling that is like the patience of waiting and like loss. Yeah, Jack thinks, me too. 

____

“And the Doctor was… a man?” Somehow, Yaz seems even more uncomfortable about _this_. Oh, twenty-first century humans… 

____

“Didn’t she meet you right after she regenerated? It’s a thing Time Lords do, where they cheat death. Every cell in their body changes, and sometimes it’s a little more dramatic than new hair and eyes and an accent.” 

____

Yaz shakes her head. “She’s said that, sure, but I thought she was joking. How does she even _have_ the chromosomes to be a different gender? I took my A-levels in biology, I know how genetics work.”

____

Jack has to struggle not to roll his eyes. “They may _look_ human, but humanoid is just a very common body plan. Time Lords are made from different stuff.”

_____ _

Yaz looks at him for a moment. “Literally?”

_____ _

Jack tries and fails not to laugh; at least the sound that escapes him is closer to a polite chuckle than an outright guffaw. “Literally. Triple strand DNA.”

_____ _

“That’s—“ Yaz cuts herself off.

_____ _

“Not human?” he guesses with a smile.

_____ _

“I suppose.”

_____ _

He figures that she had wanted to say that the Doctor is more alien than she thought. Maybe that the Doctor is weird, or strange, or too foreign. Jack respects Yaz a little bit more for having held her tongue.

_____ _

“Do you think she can relate to us?” Yaz asks. “At all?”

_____ _

“I think,” Jack says carefully, “she brings people like you along because you’re the people she wants to relate to the most.”

_____ _

“Not people like you.” It isn’t a question.

_____ _

He sighs. “Not people like me. I’m… Maybe once, I was a normal human she could want to relate to, or maybe one she could make better. But I haven’t been that for a long time now.”

_____ _

“Because you’re old?” she guesses.

_____ _

“Because I’m immortal. I’m _wrong_ —her words—and just having me around makes her uncomfortable.” He may have come to terms with being unable to die, but admitting to the rest of it here on the TARDIS is such simple, plain words? That’s not quite so easy. Not waiting for the other shoe to drop and actively tempting fate are very different things.

_____ _

“But _she_ did that, didn’t she? She and your friend Rosa?”

_____ _

“Rose,” Jack says. The correction is automatic, but the way it makes his heart clench to hear one of the Doctor’s friends misremember her name is new. It feels almost like a sacred name, after all these centuries of missing and revering her almost equally. It feels a little like a blasphemy to get it wrong.

_____ _

“Rose,” Yaz repeats, like she’s trying to memorize the name. It’s a gesture he can appreciate, even if it is just a gesture.

_____ _

“It’s complicated.” That’s the best Jack can think to tell her, when he doesn’t know how soon the Doctor will be back. The Doctor, he knows, will shut down this line of discussion as soon as she hears of it.

_____ _

“Everything with her is ‘complicated’.” He can hear the air quotes. The administration mixed with the annoyance. He doesn’t envy this young woman with her regular human life all tangled up with the affairs of the ageless.

_____ _

“Yeah,” he says. That’s all there is to say.

_____ _

“So!” the Doctor shouts from down the hallway, and Jack has to wonder if she has been eavesdropping because the timing is just too perfect. “You did it! See, I knew you could!” When she comes clomping into the console room she is wearing another perfect, mud-free copy of her usual clothes, sans coat. The color of the shirt makes those complicated eyes of hers look bluer than they do hazel or brown and for a moment he feels a little lost in them.

_____ _

“In the vortex, just like you asked!” Jack spreads his arms in an act of showy arrogance, pretending for her like he’s known the whole time that he could do this. He is also pretending like that they were absolutely not just talking about the Doctor practically behind her back. 

_____ _

Yaz looks between him and the Doctor and wisely stays silent. 

_____ _

“Dinner?” the Doctor asks. Her voice has that quality to it that Jack knows means the good mood is at least a bit forced. She must have heard them talking about her and about River, he decides. 

_____ _

Yaz gestures down at her clothes, slightly mud splattered and rather wrinkled. The state of her hair isn’t much better but he’s been polite enough to not say anything to her about. “Shower.”

_____ _

“Right,” the Doctor says with a little nod, “a shower for Yaz. Jack?”

_____ _

His greatcoat is dirtier than Yaz’s entire outfit—only one of them went into the mud after the Doctor and her sonic—but the cuts and scrapes from those monkeys probably stand out more. “Infirmary,” he suggests. “Join me, Doctor?”

_____ _

He can see in her demeanor, in the subtle way her shoulders drop and her chin tilts upwards, that she knows he means to suggest that they continue their earlier discussion.

_____ _

“Alright,” she says easily. He’s pretty sure what they are about to go do will be anything but. 

_____ _

  
  


_____ _

The first thing Jack is aware of in the far-away, hidden recesses of his mind is the color red, accompanied by the uncertain knowledge that he is for some reason looking _up_. Except, it’s not actually exactly red. It’s too yellow for that, too bright, too golden a glow that originates from twin pinpricks of bright, shining light.

_____ _

It’s the first thing he’s aware of, but also there is nothing else.

_____ _

He opens his eyes to the TARDIS infirmary, the white lights and clarity of his surroundings a bit of shock after nothing but color. The Doctor sits unmoving on the stool across from his, her expression troubled. He’s still muddy and a little bit scratched up, but that doesn't matter right now. Not to him.

_____ _

“That’s all you can help me dig up?” he asks, disappointed despite not having expected even that much to begin with.

_____ _

The Doctor is silent for so long that he considers counting the seconds.

_____ _

“Doctor?” he presses. She’s still just sitting there, their mental link closed again, fingertips still against his temples and looking very far away.

_____ _

She drops her hands into her lap. “All you got was the sky? Nothing else?”

_____ _

He blinks slowly. Sky? “If that’s what that was. It was just a color, Doctor.”

_____ _

“I think,” she says carefully, as though she’s dreading the next words but her mouth will say them whether she wants it to or not, “that that was Gallifrey.”

_____ _

It’s fear for both of them that makes his voice harsh. “No, that was the glimpse of something that could have been a time I looked too long at a lamp. You have no way of knowing exactly what that was!”

_____ _

“I know my home!” she shouts right back at him. Then, quieter, looking almost surprised by her outburst: “I know my home, and the only part of what’s been left of your missing years leads us there.”

_____ _

“It does?” he asks, wary. Humans aren’t allowed on Gallifrey, Jack knows that. He’s never been stupid enough to even consider trying to visit. The Time Lords and the other native Gallifreyans would know he didn’t belong there in a heartbeat—or in a heartsbeat, as it were. And yet, apparently, it’s a place he doesn’t remember being.

_____ _

“Do you know how sometimes you smell something, or you see something from a particular angle, and suddenly remember something you didn’t know you’d forgotten?”

_____ _

Jack nods. Enough of that happened just recently during his dinner with Gwen, and it keeps happening here on the TARIDIS.

_____ _

“I’m hoping—emphasis on _hope_ , Jack, this is not a sure thing—I’m hoping that if I take you to Gallifrey and present you with enough information there will be something to trigger an event like that for you.”

_____ _

“How?” he says. It doesn’t seem possible, he doesn’t say. He’s long given up on impossible being a thing that exists when the Doctor is involved.

_____ _

She explains to him that there is a thing called the Matrix of Time, and tells him how it holds enough knowledge of what Gallifrey was like before its destruction—which destruction is not something he thinks it wise to ask—that it could possibly, maybe jog his memory. The explanation includes the word 'maybe' several times.

_____ _

“I’ll have to be connected with you again,” she says, caution in her voice, “and deeper than I was this time. Today you were able to close doors on what you wanted me away from, but if we go through with this that won’t be an option. You sure you’re willing to do that? Really, really sure?”

_____ _

He is far past seeking closure for his stolen memories, well beyond giving up on those secrets as gone for good. Still… if it was Gallifrey, it may have been the Division. If it was the Division, it may be related to her. He may not want to find his own answers but that doesn’t mean he wants to deny her hers, even if the Doctor finds something in his mind she doesn’t like.

_____ _

Jack seeks eye contact, waiting patiently until she’s met his gaze.

_____ _

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sure.”

_____ _

The smile he receives in return—tired, sad, hopeful, _grateful_ —is almost worth how afraid he is of what they might learn.

_____ _

  
  


_____ _

When he gets ready for bed later that night, she follows him. He’s left alone to shower but when he leaves his bathroom the Doctor is sitting cross legged in the center of his bed, wearing a loose tank top and comfortable looking athletic shorts.

_____ _

“Thought we could have a sleepover,” she says brightly. It’s only because he knows her so very, very well that he can see the bit of doubt in the lines around her eyes. As though he would ever say no.

_____ _

“You actually want to sleep?” he asks. It isn’t a come-on; he’s curious. “I don’t remember you ever being much of a fan.”

_____ _

“Sure! Love a good sleep, me. Learned to appreciate it in that prison; did it almost every night. It’s very restful.”

_____ _

Jack chuckles, digging into a drawer to find some pants. He would usually sleep in the nude but that doesn’t feel like a particularly good idea tonight. “That would be why it’s called rest.”

_____ _

“Good word for it,” she agrees.

_____ _

He takes the towel around his waist to put sleep pants on with his back to her, and when he turns around there is a soft look in her eyes.

_____ _

“Budge over,” he says. The Doctor obliges, scooting to the side of the bed opposite the one he’s standing. They’ve never done this before but sliding under the covers beside her still feels comfortable and easy, like they have casual impromptu sleepovers like this all of the time.

_____ _

She curls herself against his side almost as soon his head has met his pillow. The lights dim on their own and he tries to focus a feeling of gratitude at the TARDIS.

_____ _

“Thanks for getting us into the vortex earlier.”

_____ _

Jack blinks up at the dark ceiling. “Why did you let me?”

_____ _

The Doctor sighs and he can feel the gust of her cool breath across his shoulder and chest. “Didn’t want to let the mud set,” she says. There is a moment of silence during which he tries to content himself with that non-answer. “I want you to feel welcome here, Jack. You _are_ welcome here.”

_____ _

He doesn’t feel good about how this clearly means she can tell he’s expecting to be asked to leave any day now.

_____ _

“You mentioned River.” It’s a question more than a statement, and one he very much wants answered.

_____ _

“Yes, I did.” The response is flat. She either doesn’t recognize the question or, more likely, she’s not eager to explain upon it.

_____ _

“ _Why_ did you mention River?”

_____ _

“She liked you.” The Doctor inhales as though she’s about to say more, though she appears to think better of whatever it was and remains quiet.

_____ _

It’s honesty hour after that trip into his head, he supposes, and he can offer a truth in exchange for the one she’s given him. “I loved her.”

_____ _

“Me too,” the Doctor says.

_____ _

He can feel the two rapid heartbeats where she has pressed herself against his arm, a dual rhythm of sadness-sadness and loss-loss, and he rolls onto his side to face her. “She’s gone for you now?” Even if he’s pretty sure she is because he’s read River’s obituaries—hell, he helped _write_ one of those obituaries—it’s always better to make absolutely certain when time travel is involved. 

_____ _

In the low light the TARDIS is providing them, the Doctor’s hair nearly seems to be glowing. He brushes one of the locks of moonlight silver away from her face and behind her ear as he waits for her to answer.

_____ _

“I took her to the Darillium to see the singing towers. We had twenty-four years of adventures that night, and then she went to the Library.” The Doctor doesn’t need to tell him what happened next; that Professor River Song died in the Library is as immutable a fact as Professor River song having loved the Doctor. “Maybe we’ll run into one another again, but this face was never in her spotter’s guide.”

_____ _

He wants to offer the Doctor some hope, to say that doesn’t mean she never saw it, that it just means that she was her usual careful self about spoilers, but he knows the reassurance will fall flat. He also knows how painful it can be to see someone you know would be long dead if only your timelines moved the same way.

_____ _

The only practical thing he can think to do is to pull her closer and kiss her forehead. She tucks a leg between his own, tangling their limbs at the ankle. This is by far the most skin-on-skin contact they have ever shared with one another and there’s nothing at all sexual about it. That would be unusual for Jack, were this not the Doctor. Still, it’s _comfortable_. Every new moment of casual closeness with her is the new most comfortable.

_____ _

He hopes it’s as nice for her. He hopes, really really hopes, that he isn’t so much of a horrible temporal anomaly that she cannot relax.

_____ _

Jack hums softly, rubbing a hand across her back. “Do you want to tell me about any of those adventures you two has over those twenty-four years?”

_____ _

The Doctor makes a thoughtful noise. A sad noise. “I think I’d just like to sleep, Jack.”

_____ _

“Alright.” He kisses her forehead again. “Sleep well, Doctor.”  
  


_____ _

_____ _

When Jack wakes up he has no idea how long he’s been asleep, but it felt long enough to have been restful. Even so, his bedroom is still dark and the Doctor is still beside him. She’s turned onto her side, warm from their prolonged contact and snuggled backwards into him as he curls around her. That answers a question he hadn’t thought to ask: this Doctor is apparently comfortable being the little spoon.

_____ _

It isn’t until she sighs in a deliberate-seeming way that he knows she’s awake.

_____ _

“Doctor?” he asks softly.

_____ _

The only reply he gets is a quiet, toneless hum. He sits props himself on one arm just enough to see her and—oh. She has a polaroid photograph in her hands, one that must be several thousand years old by the timeline of the TARDIS it’s been in. In it Jack, Rose, and the Doctor he first knew smile at them, Jack’s arm extended as he holds the camera to take the photo.

_____ _

“I remember you taking this,” she says. Her voice is just as soft as his own had been a moment ago. “That were a good day, weren’t it? Saved the world that day.”

_____ _

He smiles, letting himself lay back down on his side and pulling her back firmly against his front again. “We saved the world a lot of days.”

_____ _

Her chuckle is more motion than noise. “I guess we did. We all look so happy. Not me, I guess; I look so _grumpy_. Did that me ever smile?”

_____ _

“You know he did.” He remembers a man who smiled so much, almost always at Rose Tyler. The few, wonderful times that smile was directed at him? That was a smile that could break hearts. It was a smile that could mend them, too. “I fell in love with the grumpy face first, though, you know. That grumpy face welcoming me onto the TARDIS when I thought I would die, scolding me to close the door…” Dancing with Rose, then dancing with him... What an incredible night.

______ _ _

“You fall in love that quickly?” Is he imagining things, or does she sound _teasing_ even as she sounds a bit sad.

______ _ _

He smiles indulgently. “Don’t say it like it’s a bad thing.”

______ _ _

“I don’t _mean it_ like it’s a bad thing. Your heart is full of so much love. You humans, you have a lot of space for it, but some of you don’t take advantage. You’re different.”

______ _ _

“All the people you travel with are different. I figured…” He pauses for a moment, trying to find the right way to word it, and is grateful that the Doctor has patience enough to wait. “Well, I guess I figured you picked us for a reason.”

______ _ _

He can feel her nod. “Oh, sure. That’s a part of it, part of why I keep certain people around. Still, I wonder sometimes if that’s a mistake.”

______ _ _

It’s easy enough for Jack to hear what she isn’t saying. He wonders, very briefly, if she’s only saying this much because they’re not in a position where he can see her face; this isn’t a conversation _he_ would be able to have about his own life. So many people she loves have killed and died out of their love of her, and he knows how it feels to always be the last one standing. He so intimately knows how it feels.

______ _ _

“It’s not a bad thing,” he says slowly, “having people who are willing to do anything they can for you. How much people love you only speaks of how wonderful you are.”

______ _ _

“Loving me is dangerous.”

______ _ _

Jack smiles softly, heart breaking just a little bit. “Loving is dangerous in general, but anyone who has ever loved anyone knows that.”

______ _ _

“Do they?” She sound so, so doubtful.

______ _ _

In the time he’s known the Doctor, he’s seen many of her friends make informed decisions again and again and again. He’s seen this Doctor’s three friends—maybe the only people this Doctor has traveled with—make their own decisions just recently. He’s made _his_ own decisions.

______ _ _

“They do,” he says, voice firm. He really, really means it.

______ _ _

  
  


______ _ _

Later, during what is _properly_ the next morning, Jack can hear the shouting in the console room from all the way down the hall.

______ _ _

“I’m not going out there just so you can leave me!”

______ _ _

“This is not up for discussion! Where we’re going is too dangerous for me to take you along!”

______ _ _

“It’s never been too dangerous before! What if it’s not ten months too late next time? What if it’s ten years!”

______ _ _

Okay, that? That’s his cue to step in. He swallows down the rest of his coffee, setting the mug down on the floor with a quiet apology to the TARDIS and a promise to come back and clean it up later.

______ _ _

“Ladies, ladies,” he calls jovially as he rushes towards the commotion, “what’s this I overhear about going somewhere dangerous? Will it be exciting?”

______ _ _

He draws up short once the room is in view. The Doctor and Yaz stand in front of the open TARDIS door, sunlight streaming in through it. The wind that follows the light is chilly and smells of _city._ Yaz’s posture is ramrod straight and she is clearly livid. The Doctor is still, clearly and carefully so in a way that doesn’t seem to give away any emotion. He can guess, however, that the reminder of _ten months_ must have hurt.

______ _ _

“Yaz needs to go home before we can take our little fact-finding trip. Jack, tell her.”

______ _ _

“Fact-finding?” Yaz asks, angry and confused. “What fact are you looking for that’s somewhere too dangerous for me, and why is _he_ different?”

______ _ _

“They’re _his_ facts,” the Doctor says, just as Jack is saying: “I didn’t think we would be going to Gallifrey quite so soon.”

______ _ _

Yaz gapes at him, then at the Doctor, and Jack gets the feeling that he should not have said that. “You’re going _back_ to Gallifrey? Your home planet? Didn’t that…” she glances between him and the Doctor “... _you know?_ ”

______ _ _

Jack looks between the human and the Time Lord, suddenly very concerned. It’s distinctly unusual, being concerned by what a human has to tell him about a Time Lord’s home. “Didn’t it what?”

______ _ _

The Doctor reaches past Yaz and slams the door to the TARDIS closed, apparently thinking better of discussing this where the whole of Sheffield can hear. An unhappy buzz comes from the console at the harsh treatment.

______ _ _

“That’s _why_ it’s dangerous,” the Doctor bites out, ignoring him. “I don’t know if all of the effects are gone and I _won’t_ know until we’re there.”

______ _ _

“Effects of what exactly?” He’s careful to keep his voice as even as he can, though this ‘not being given all the information’ thing by both the Doctor _and_ her human friend is getting old pretty fast.

______ _ _

“We had to set off the Death Particle to stop—” The Doctor cuts herself off abruptly, then starts again. “We had to set off the Death Particle.”

______ _ _

She doesn’t say anything more, just stands there looking at him with an expression that practically begs him not to ask anything else, but Jack can put two and two together. The near-mythical Death Particle is supposed to be a Cyberman invention, and if it was on Gallifrey then the Cybermen were probably there too.

______ _ _

Yaz and the Doctor keep arguing about it while Jack thinks: Oh, Doctor, what did you _do?_  
  


______ _ _

______ _ _

The TARDIS doors open onto a wide golden hallway with high ceilings, cavernous and vacant. The empty room echoes with the sound of their footsteps. Long has Jack fantasized about coming here to the seat of Time Lord power, but never like this. Not to an empty tomb. Pillars lay crumbled to pieces, statues smashed, and scorch marks mar the walls. Everything is silent and he realizes: People have died here. Lots of people.

______ _ _

“No Death Particle residue,” the Doctor says, “but still be careful.”

______ _ _

“This wasn’t the time war?” Jack asks. It’s a question because it’s just a guess; River had shared with him what the Doctor had said about Gallifrey not being truly _gone_ , about how it was instead locked away, but what else could do something to this place other than such a war?

______ _ _

“This was the Master.”

______ _ _

This sort of devastation is something he could expect from the Master anywhere other than his home. The man who tortured him for a year had been so _proud_ to be what he was, so insistent that he was above all other species. The Time Lords, the Master had bragged over and over, were different. Were _better_.

______ _ _

There’s something more at the root of all of this than the Doctor has told him. There usually is when it comes to her past, and if she’s hiding it so obviously it’s usually never good. He takes a moment, just a moment, to harbor the fruitless wish that the Doctor could just _let him in_ and trust him with all of herself. Then he throws that wish away because he’s always known it’s never going to happen. 

______ _ _

They come down a long golden hallway to a big, circular chamber. In the center is a raised platform singed black by what was probably a small, powerful explosion. Above it is a charred golden ring—everything here is _so_ golden, more than similar to the color the Doctor pulled from his mind just last night—inscribed with the beautiful circular writing of the Time Lords.

______ _ _

On the floor are—Oh, God.

______ _ _

“Doctor?” he asks, hesitant and afraid. On the floor at the bottom of the several tiers of raised landings are Cybermen. Some of them aren’t in one piece any more, clearly ripped apart by whatever blast ruined this room, but the ones closer to them at the top of the stairs are fully intact.

______ _ _

It’s not that they’re _Cybermen_ that makes Jack’s skin crawl; he’s dealt with too many Cybermen to be so disturbed by just the sight of them. It’s their ceremonial-looking headdresses and robes, just like all of the statues they have passed. It’s the way their heads are engraved with Gallifreyan writing.

______ _ _

“They’re dead,” the Doctor reassures him and Yaz, continuing to walk confidently into the room. “Emptied of organic life. If the Death Particle hadn’t worked they would have gotten back up again.”

______ _ _

“You can’t mean…” Cybermen who can regenerate? He feels sick.

______ _ _

The Doctor stops just short of the middle of the central platform, crouching down and pulling out her sonic. She scans as she talks. “I wouldn’t have resorted to the Death Particle for anything less.”

______ _ _

“You said you fixed it,” Jack says harshly. The words are an accusation, though he would very much rather they not be.

______ _ _

He tried to prevent this. He _died_ to prevent this, died more than once in his quest to warn the Doctor. That shouldn’t have led to an ending worse than the one that came before it.

______ _ _

“I distinctly remember having said ‘sort of’.” Only the Doctor can sound both so dismissive and so guilty at the same time. “And this _is_ fixed, in a way, isn’t it? The Cybermen are all gone.”

______ _ _

He isn’t sure what his face is doing, but it probably isn’t very nice. “This is horrible. This is what the Master did?”

______ _ _

Yaz glances his way at the name. Jack really wishes she didn’t recognize it. 

______ _ _

The Doctor stands back to her full height, looking at the sonic instead of at them. “This is what the Master tried to do. A very brave man stopped them.” She turns to fully face Jack. “The Matrix seems functional, but I’ll still have to act as a conduit. It’s not made to interface with human minds directly.”

______ _ _

“The Matrix?” Yaz asks. “Like the old movie?”

______ _ _

“It’s a repository of all Time Lord consciousness and knowledge. Almost constantly, a Time Lord’s TARDIS is uploading what happens to them, what they think and feel and experience. If a Time Lord did it, it’s in there.” She’s answering Yaz’s question and with it others of Jack’s that he hasn’t asked last night, about what exactly they’re doing here and how she expects to find any answers when the people who could give them aren’t around anymore.

______ _ _

The expression on Yaz’s face is impressed, or maybe one of wonder. Probably this is the most information she’s gotten out of the Doctor about Time Lords at once; it certainly is the most Jack has, though he’s hearing it now for the second time in as many days. “And we’re going inside it? Are _you_ in there?”

______ _ _

The Doctor shakes her head. “Jack and I are. I’m sorry you can’t come with us”—and Jack knows this Doctor well enough already to be able to tell that this is the tone of voice she uses when she’s lying about something she isn’t particularly proud of—“but fifty-first century humans have done _just_ that little bit more evolving to let them be a smidge more psychic than you lot.”

______ _ _

He notices that the Doctor very much did not answer if she’s in there or not.

______ _ _

“How is the power here still on with no one to maintain the electrical grid?” Jack wonders aloud. It’s half genuine curiosity, half a desire to distract from the storm he can see brewing in Yaz’s eyes. An argument about the evolution of the human race would be monumentally unproductive and he would rather get this over with before he can think about it too much to go through with it.

______ _ _

The Doctor scoffs. “You think Time Lords use a grid? Power here is generated by a sort of warp star, one that will keep burning forever. Used to be under the floor right in that room there”—she points through one of the grand archways, a different one from the one they came in through—“but now it’s lost. Must still be on the planet though or none of this would work. Don’t even know if it _can_ be moved off the planet, come to think of it.” She looks thoughtful as she settles down on the floor right at the center of all the wreckage, seemingly not caring about all the shells of Cybermen around them. “Okay. Come on, Jack, sit in front of me. Yaz, if you notice _any_ movement around here, you need to tap me on the shoulder right away. Got it?”

______ _ _

“Got it,” Yaz says with a nod. She seems happier with a task to take care of, something Jack can relate to.

______ _ _

Jack sits on the floor as instructed, folding his hands in his lap. He doesn't know when they began shaking but he would really rather they stop.

______ _ _

“Remember, Jack, leave all your doors open. If you try to shut me out at all then this won’t work.”

______ _ _

He tries for lighthearted flirting and fails utterly miserably, saying, “I’d never want to shut you out.”

______ _ _

Just before being shepherded into the Matrix, as she places her hands on either side of his face with her fingertips at his temples, he catches the Doctor thinking: To do this with a human is blasphemy. Then he catches the question: Does it really matter, with everything I know this is hiding?

______ _ _

He doesn’t have time to wonder what that could possibly mean because suddenly they are elsewhere.

______ _ _

  
  


______ _ _

A long, long time ago, when Jack was very, very young and just preparing to leave his planet for the first time, he was given a warning about telepathy by one of his more overly-cautious family members.

______ _ _

You can join minds with a telepathic species, he had been told, but always remember that it is a _joining_. Whoever allows you into their mind is also being allowed into yours.

______ _ _

Jack never expected to have use for that advice, had even mostly forgotten it. He is pretty sure, however, that nowhere on Gallifrey that could jostle his forgotten memories into being somewhat less forgotten would look anything like the lush, verdant landscape surrounding him right now.

______ _ _

He turns in a slow semicircle, taking it all in. Their surroundings are so very vivid, so _real_. The sun shines, the wind blows, insects buzz, and on the lane fifty or so feet away a man is riding an old-fashioned looking bicycle. This could be one of innumerable days he himself has experienced in Earth’s past, but he doesn’t recognize anything here.

______ _ _

“No, no, no,” the Doctor is saying from behind him. “This is _not_ where I wanted to take you.”

______ _ _

Jack watches as the man in the distance gets off his bicycle, stopping to look at something in the road. “Where is this? Who is he?”

______ _ _

“A manufactured memory. Not important.”

______ _ _

Even not looking at her, he is somehow filled with the certain knowledge that it is a lie. Is it because they’re connected? Is it because this is hers, from her mind?

______ _ _

He’s not going to call her out on it, but he is going to push. “It must be important somehow if you’re showing it to me. Whose memory is it?”

______ _ _

“A shared memory of all Time Lords. One stuck in our heads, a clue to something horrible.” This place is so peaceful, but the Doctor’s voice is thin and frightened in the way it is when she is facing horrible danger. His heart aches for her, though he doesn’t know what has her so scared.

______ _ _

“A clue to what?”

______ _ _

______ _ _

The scene around them shifts, and suddenly they are on the edge of a very Gallifreyan room that looks quite a lot like some sort of science laboratory. There are all sorts of instruments he couldn’t begin to recognize, scales and measures and beakers and vials. In the center of the room, a woman is leaning over a child that reclines on something that bears some resemblance to a hospital bed. 

______ _ _

“No!” the Doctor says, too loud. The sound echoes, but neither figure reacts. “Stop asking me questions when I need to focus!”

______ _ _

He grabs her arm, a grounding point of contact between them. “This is obviously important to you or we wouldn’t be here. What is it?”

______ _ _

“It’s what the Master showed me,” the Doctor says, sounding angrier than he’s heard her in a long time. Angrier than he’s ever heard this Doctor. “It’s the biggest secret on Gallifrey, the biggest lie. I never wanted you to know, I never wanted—” She cuts herself off with a frustrated groan. She isn’t looking at him but at the woman and the child.

______ _ _

The child is injected with something and Jack watches—disbelieving, not _wanting_ to believe—as she regenerates right there in front of them. He knows, intellectually, that this is a memory but he still feels like he should have stopped the murder that just happened right in front of their eyes.

______ _ _

“What _is_ this?” His tone, he hopes, leaves no room for argument instead of answer. Please, Doctor, don’t run away from this one, not when you so obviously want to share the burden of whatever it is you know.

______ _ _

“I told you. The biggest secret on Gallifrey.” She sounds something beyond angry now, beyond sad. Haunted, like what they are seeing affects her as much as him. And it affects him _deeply_. “The origin of all regeneration. The Timeless Child. Me.”

______ _ _

He doesn’t want to believe that, but it means some things she’s said before, things he didn’t fully understand, now make horrible, horrible sense. Older than Time Lords, the Doctor had told him. He had thought that was exaggeration, or about ages spent on time travel away from home but this is… 

______ _ _

Jack watches on in horror as the child in front of them—the child that is the _Doctor_ —regenerates again and again, growing a bit older and looking a bit more frightened each time. Little hands gripping at the bed become larger hands in restraints. When the vision in front of them finally flickers and vanishes into an empty, white nothingness it is an incredible relief.

______ _ _

Wordlessly, he pulls the Doctor into his arms. She doesn’t object.

______ _ _

“I understand why you couldn’t tell me that,” he says after a time, lips right against the crown of her head. They’ve been standing here in this embrace, swaying gently, for he has no idea how long. Minutes? Hours? It’s impossible to tell.

______ _ _

“I didn’t want you to know,” she says. The thought comes to his mind, her voice clear but silent: I didn’t want your pity.

______ _ _

He squeezes her tighter. “It changes nothing.” You will always be the Doctor, he tries to think towards her. I could never pity you. I will always love you.

______ _ _

She’s silent for a while, and when she eventually pulls away he lets her go. It’s a complete surprise when she rises onto tiptoes and kisses him softly. “Let’s try again to do what we came for.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

The scene shifts yet again, the world around him suddenly on fire with the same orange-gold glow she pulled out of his memories in the TARDIS infirmary. Twin suns beat down on the empty streets surrounding them, and he has the feeling that if they could feel the temperature it would be _very_ warm.

______ _ _

“That’s more like it,” the Doctor says, sounding satisfied. “The Citadel, mid-spring. I’m _sure_ I got this one from you. It’s—oh! Look!” She points down the street, and oh, holy shit. No way.

______ _ _

Jack himself is _right there_. Jack himself is who she is pointing to, Jack as he was before he took the name Jack. Before he left the Time Agency and long before he met the Doctor. He’s surprised she recognizes him when he barely does, thrown off by the clothing and the baby face.

______ _ _

This Jack, this impossibly young Jack, is saying something that they are too far away to hear. At his side is a man in Time Lord regalia, goofily pompous headdress and all. Together, they enter a building.

______ _ _

In wordless agreement, he and the Doctor follow.

______ _ _

He isn’t sure what he expects from the building, but he knows it’s not something that looks like the waiting room at a very fancy doctor’s office. Rows of chairs, a reception desk, even potted plants and a water cooler… If there weren’t so very much of that beautiful circular writing nearly everywhere he looks, he would think this could be anywhere.

______ _ _

“Is this familiar?” the Doctor asks him.

______ _ _

He shakes his head. “No.”

______ _ _

“Me neither. I’ve never been here before; it looks frankly old-fashioned, not nearly enough—”

______ _ _

  
  


______ _ _

They are very abruptly back in reality, the Doctor jerking away from him. The sudden separation is disorienting, nauseating, and gives him the worst headache he’s had since the last time he died. He blames the disorientation and the pain for why it takes him several seconds to notice that the entire world is shaking.

______ _ _

“Yaz?” the Doctor calls, already getting to her feet. “Yaz, what is happening?” She stumbles against the shaking, throwing her arms out for balance.

______ _ _

Yaz comes running down the stairs. “I don’t know! It just _started_ while I was sitting up there.”

______ _ _

“To the TARDIS. Now!” The Doctor, clearly not as affected by the jarring disruption of their time in the Matrix as Jack is, grabs his hand. Yaz glances their way before sprinting away.

______ _ _

“What’s going on?” he asks. His words are a little slurred and he is far less sure on his feet among all this shaking than she is. Something, he’s beginning to realize, is very wrong with him.

______ _ _

She looks around instead of at him, but his vision isn’t focused enough to see her face. “If I had to guess? The Matrix _really_ does not like having a fixed point inside it.”

______ _ _

He would laugh at how terribly obvious that should have been if only he didn’t think opening his mouth again would just lead to vomiting.

______ _ _

  
  


______ _ _

The following events are hazy. The three of them make it back onto the TARDIS, the Doctor gets them away into the vortex, and at some point Jack loses the battle to stay upright.

______ _ _

He’s pretty sure he dies after that.

______ _ _

When he comes to from the nothingness that is death, he’s in his own bedroom. The lights are low but not off, and when he turns his head the Doctor is sitting in a chair at the bedside. She’s slumped forward, elbows on her knees and head in her hands. She is the most lovely thing he has ever seen, but he wishes she didn’t look so weary.

______ _ _

He pushes himself upright. “What’s got you so glum, beautiful?”

______ _ _

“Jack!” In her voice is surprise and delight enough to make him smile. “You shouldn’t be moving yet. You were out for a long time.”

______ _ _

“It takes a bit longer these days, but I still reset fully when I die.” He’s _sure_ she knows this, very sure she could never forget. “I'm _fine_." 

______ _ _

“The infirmary didn’t want to let me in with you.” She seems worried in a way he isn’t used to, in a way she has never really been towards _him_. 

______ _ _

“Maybe that’s because the TARDIS knew I didn’t need the infirmary. It didn’t want you to worry.” That sounds reasonable enough to him, and is better than the TARDIS thinking him too much of an anomaly to let him live. That's what he’s pretty sure the conclusion she’s drawn about it has been.

______ _ _

It’s probably a valid conclusion, he realizes.

______ _ _

“Maybe.” She doesn’t sound convinced. “You should still rest.”

______ _ _

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks. He’s not sure he can bear any more of this softness from her if the answer is yes.

______ _ _

She looks at him like he’s daft. Maybe he is. “You must not be as fine as you say you are because leaving is the opposite of the resting I just suggested you do.”

______ _ _

“The TARDIS, Doctor. Do you want me to leave the TARDIS?”

______ _ _

“What?” Her nose scrunches up, the way it does when she’s offended or confused. 

______ _ _

She is _genuinely_ confused, he realizes. Does he really have to spell it out for her? He might just be the biggest idiot alive, because he’s going to.

______ _ _

“I’m _wrong_. I’m so wrong a big collective consciousness of Time Lord memory didn’t want me anywhere near it. I’ll understand if that’s made you reconsider things.” That's not a lie, he tells himself, because understanding and liking are different things.

______ _ _

She shakes her head. “I’m not going to run away because of that, and I'm not going to run away just because you know something about me I wish you didn’t.”

______ _ _

That doesn't fit with what he has experienced from her in the past. His doubt must be evident because she looks away, shoulders drooping. He wants to reach out to her, offer some sort of comfort, but doesn’t. He doesn’t know if any sort of comfort from him would go over very well right now.

______ _ _

The Doctor sighs. “You were right, what you were thinking in the Matrix. I did need to have someone else know.” It’s a big admission for her to make, and he feels full of love and pride for her having made it. “ _I_ killed you today, Jack. I’m why you died. If we hadn’t gone there...” 

______ _ _

Not for the first time, he wants to say. It’s really okay, he wants to say. It wasn’t really your fault, he wants to say. “I’ll always come back,” he says.

______ _ _

“I know,” she responds, and it should be impossible for someone to put so much heartbreak and so much relief into just two words. “So stay. Please stay.”

______ _ _

Has she ever been so forthright with him, he wonders? Has the Doctor ever asked him to stick around by just saying as much outright, not just hinting around it and assuming that he would? He doesn’t know what’s going on in that brilliant mind of hers to make her act like this, but it’s more than a little concerning. 

______ _ _

They’ll have to talk about it eventually, but he knows better than to draw attention to it right now.

______ _ _

He nods. “I’ll stay,” he says.

______ _ _

“I would really like to kiss you now,” she says in a quiet voice. “If that’s okay with you.”

______ _ _

He doesn’t know if it’s an intentional nod to what he had said to her during those first few minutes on the TARDIS after their prison break. The Doctor had pulled away then; Jack isn’t going to pull away now.

______ _ _

“I would like that very much, Doctor.”

______ _ _

She gets up on the bed with him then, kneeling beside him as he leans back on his hands to watch her move. There’s a moment of apparent indecision before she settles sideways onto his lap.

______ _ _

The kiss is gentle and soft and absolutely lovely. A delicate thing. Her cool lips taste like time and like a hope he never expected and like second chances. There is so much still to talk about but he has a feeling—a feeling likely not his own, for he does not expect any talking to ever happen—that time for that will come. 

______ _ _

This is a moment and a kiss that he never wants to see end, and he is somehow unbelievably lucky enough today that it doesn’t. Not for a long while. 

______ _ _

He and the Doctor didn’t get their answers on Gallifrey, but that’s not the worst that could have happened. This new and hesitant understanding between them, he thinks, is better than he could have hoped for.

______ _ _

______ _ _

They don’t go on too many more adventures before a new photograph joins the one with Rose on his bedside table. Jack has one arm around the Doctor's waist, the other over Yaz’s shoulders, and all three of them are smiling.

______ _ _

______ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> I am already working over the final scene from this from the Doctor’s POV as the beginning of another sort-of sequel, because I am certainly not done exploring their missing memories. Is this what an endless cycle of fic looks like?
> 
> This fic was originally called "proximity" and consisted of only the first scene with the Doctor in Jack's lap. I'm not sure how it became... this. I am even less sure how it became all of this in just under a week. Jack's head is a very, very different place than the Doctor's, and it was interesting to dive into it for the first time in a long while.
> 
> Thank you very, very much for reading.  
> You can find me on twitter as @krebshouting, or even on discord as kreb#9999. ~~I am dying to talk to someone else about this fandom and this ship.~~


End file.
